Louie CK's Fat Lady Rant: Why Does It Take A Man For Us To Listen To Fat Women?

On this week’s episode of Louie, comedian Louis CK’s critically acclaimed TV show, there was this epic “fat woman rant,” that the internet is clamoring about because it’s “genius.” It is genius and I very much enjoyed it. I very much enjoyed the fact that a “fat woman” was the love interest, that she was funny, charming, and that she had the balls to confront Louis when despite his real attraction to her he refused to date her because he didn’t want to be seen with a “fat girl.” This is a real thing that exists: people not dating those they are attracted to because they are scared of how it looks.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFdWcNJ17YY&w=590]
 
This happens to fat women. It’s real. Fat women are usually the butt of jokes on TV and in real life. Rebel Wilson and Melissa McCarthy are great comedic actresses, yet they can’t appear without their weight being a staple of their character’s personality. Listen to any conversation where men are discussing how desirable a woman is and her weight will always factor into the equation. Fat people have to deal with non-fat people giving them weird looks when they have to sit next to them on public transportation. I’m not fat but obesity runs in my family. I see how members of my family get looked at. Like they’ve failed at life in some way. Meanwhile obesity, food addiction, disordered eating and overeating are all real diseases. There is an unfair amount of ignorance projected onto fat people and more harshly on fat women.
It’s a great feat when an injustice can be articulated and when it is acknowledged. It’s the start of liberation. Yet, all of these arguments about how there is fat prejudice in our society have been articulated by fat women for years but our culture only seems to clap, applaud and clamor at this injustice when Louie CK provides us with commentary about it. Don’t get me wrong, I love Louis.
Louis CK is one of my all time favorite comedians. He isn’t just funny but, to me, he’s a genius. Not because of the way he can articulate a joke but because he is always evolving in a way that most people don’t. After using the word “faggot” in one of his routines he invited a gay comic onto his show to discuss the use of the word and what it  means when a gay person hears it. This kind of gesture is better than an apology because it gives voice to the actual experience of a gay man who has dealt with that level of discrimination. A while ago there was a massive discussion on the use of “rape jokes,” where just about every male comedian huffed and puffed about freedom of speech but it was Louis CK who heard women and female comics. It was Louis who admitted that he had never thought about how profoundly real male danger is for all women on a daily basis. There’s another episode where Louis hits on and follows a Black cashier because he wants to sleep with her. The girl then calls him out on fetishizing her because of her race and because she is from the “hood.”
Louis has never been one to make cheap jokes, even when he missteps, he has always considerably been progressive on topics like race, class, gender and sexuality. It’s the reason why he is critically and publicly beloved. It’s why I love him.
All of these episodes where Louie addresses race, sexuality, gender, where Louie allows the person facing prejudice to speak up, to call him—the straight, famous, white guy—out on his shit are fantastic. They’re brilliant. They’re critically lauded. I adore them and his human empathy. He should be praised for his comedic illustration of his own personal prejudices and how he reconciles them.
Yet, I can’t help but feel like we are all patting this straight, white guy on the back for caring about people who are different from him (something we should all be doing) and then we’re continuing to turn our backs on those groups of people. Why does America need prejudice filtered from the perspective of a white guy? Black people, queer people, fat people, women have been quite vocal about the way they are mistreated in society, yet when they speak up their woes fall on deaf ears. But oh, when Louis CK tells us that being a “fat woman is hard” we suddenly perk up and care? No, we don’t care about the plight of fat women, we care about what Louis CK thinks.
Is Louis wrong for creating these episodes? Hell no. He is an artist who is fostering discussion and providing us with his point of a view, which is often a point of view we nary see on television from straight, white men. It’s a view that needs to be heard. My point is that women, queer people, people of color, fat people, any marginalized group of people should be heard first on the issues they face but they aren’t. They just aren’t. Otherwise we’d have more TV shows and long form articles discussing these issues on a critical and mainstream level.
It wasn’t the fat actress who penned her rant about what it’s like to be a fat woman, it was Louie who wrote it. She is a vessel for his words, his interpretation of her experience.
As women our experiences are far too often narrated by men. It’s why our bodies can be politicized and as Julia Louis-Dreyfus said on Veep, “If men got pregnant you could get an abortion at an ATM.” Of course people who don’t go through the same things as us have a right to talk about those things and discuss them with us. That’s how progress happens. However, Louis CK isn’t an authority on what it’s like to be a fat woman, yet we give him that authority when we culturally ignore the voices of fat women on a regular basis. This kind of thinking is why 12 Years A Slave couldn’t be made without Brad Pitt—a white guy who was willing to put his name on a movie about Black slaves. Again good for Brad, good for the movie but shame on the rest of us.
I have no issues when another party wants to become an ally of a group of people. My critique isn’t of Louis, it’s of us. We only accept the experience of outsiders when those experiences are approved by the insiders. We ignore people who tell us exactly who they are and what they’ve been through because we don’t like the packaging they come in. I am sure Louis can imagine what it’s like to be a fat woman. The same way any great writer can imagine what it’s like to be a wizard or scientist. If we’re going to listen to Louis because he practices human empathy, then maybe we should be more like Louis and do the same. After all how do you think he is able to imagine what it’s like to be people who have completely different experiences than his own? It’s probably because he listens.